Vote up?

Dear folks who are missing the point: First off, Andy’s talking about designing in the browser, so for those asking if it’s worth all the extra time to “code” major design changes/revisions every time the client asks, well, that’s part of Andy’s message: design in the browser and you don’t need to code your design—it’s already done.

As for how to handle clients, that part of Andy’s message really has nothing to do with technology, software, or workflow: it has to do with the relationship you establish with clients from day one, and how you manage that throughout a project.

We must all remember that making clients happy is not our job—our responsibility is to focus on producing the best product for them. This can be difficult for people to grasp, and the mentality of “everything the client asks for/wants/expects is always right and we should please them no matter what level of frustration or extra work we must endure as a result“—which is primarily the fault of traditional agencies—doesn’t help in the least, but that doesn’t mean we should all just keep doing things the way they’ve always been done.

What Andy’s saying is that it’s time to take control over the end result, and that requires managing the client and their expectations as much as your own approach to creating the work. To those who have stories like Michael’s — rolling over and giving in to the client’s complaints about something you already received approval for just hurts the industry. Quit it.